Deliver Us From Evil

Opens at Varsity, Fri., Nov. 10. Not Rated. 101 minutes.

Of all the hundreds of pedophile priests to be flushed out of the woodwork in recent Catholic Church history, Father Oliver O'Grady has to be one of the most harmless looking and the most sinister. Wispy, unremarkable, and accommodating, Father Ollie, as he was known to the California parishioners who for 20 years fed him, housed him, and invariably entrusted him with the spiritual care of their children, was also a predator who had sex with mothers if that got him close enough to fondle, rape, and sodomize their kids, from newborn babies to teenagers. Now, after serving half of a 14-year sentence in the U.S., he lives free as a bird in Ireland, billeted with a family that knows nothing of his past, and reporting to no one—save for the Catholic Church, which has dangled a retirement annuity in front of his nose in exchange for dropping off the planet. Only, O'Grady has been shafted by his protectors, and he's ready to sing like a canary. Amy Berg's documentary, which begins as a portrait of a damaged monster and skillfully fans out to his many victims and enablers, lifts the subject clean out of private pathology into the realm where it belongs: the rampant and systematic abuse of theological and institutional power. ELLA TAYLOR